Tradition, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

December 12, 2009 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

Are you having a Happy Chanukah?  It started at sundown last night, making today (Saturday) the first night.  All over the world, Jewish families celebrated by frying potato pancakes, lighting the menorah, spinning the dreidel, and talking about their neighbors’ tacky Christmas decorations.

What’s with all the frying?  According to legend, when the Maccabees drove the Greeks from the Temple, they needed to light the Eternal Light above the Ark.  They only had enough oil for one day, but, miraculously, the light lasted eight days, until they could get more.  To commemorate this, we eat things that are fried in oil.

Eight days, by the way, is how long a Jewish boy gets to live without being circumcised. As we learned last week, frying latkes is actually a much more serene way to observe the holiday than it might have been.  We could be frying foreskins instead.

Chanukah is a poor substitute for Christmas, no matter how we try to tart it up.  It’s a minor holiday.  Even with presents, it’s not as much fun as Purim, which has better food and encourages you to dress up in costumes.  Rabbis in drag as Esther?  That’s a celebration!

When my son was little, I knew he would want Christmas.  Everyone wants Christmas.  I want Christmas.  However, I don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Don’t get me wrong – he seems to have been a nice guy.  It’s just that Christmas is a religious holiday, and it’s not my religion.

It’s tough to be a Jew at Christmas.  It’s easy to feel left out.  In order to soften those emotions, we started having our own Chanukah party.  We invited a few of our friends, and I would fry potato pancakes.  The idea was to let The Boy feel like he had something to share that was fun, so he’s feel on equal footing when we went to his friends’ Christmas parties.

Over the years, the party changed.  We moved to a better apartment, so the list grew.  We set the party permanently on a Sunday afternoon, so people could bring kids without risking tantrums.  I stopped making potato pancakes, although they were delicious, and started to buy donuts (which are also fried and therefore traditional) instead.  Not only did this allow me to actually converse with my guests instead of getting spattered with hot oil for three hours, but people like them better.  We get a case of champagne.  We order sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli so people would not OD on sugar.  We play cartoons or Holiday Inn. It’s relaxed and friendly, just like a party should be.

And now, my son is having his own party in his own apartment in Los Angeles.  It’s on the same day, at the same time (that is, in mid-afternoon, not simultaneously).  I’m remarkably touched by this.  It feels like I’ve passed on something valuable.

I felt the same way at his Bar Mitzvah.  There he was, a young boy, reading his Torah portion, which was something really obscure about managing the families of priests, and burning their daughters if they are prostitutes.  As he stood there, I realized he was reading from the same scrolls, written in the same hand, that our ancestors had read from for thousands of years.  Although I don’t know from one day to the next whether I believe in the existence of God, I did feel the existence of the continuity of life.

And now, I feel like I’ve passed on hospitality.  That’s a value all religions should (and do) embrace.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases questions whether it’s possible to get decent deli in Los Angeles.